Jude the Obscure

Novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was born in the county of Dorset, England, and worked as an architect before becoming a full-time novelist in the early 1870s, after the success of Far From the Madding Crowd (1874). Many of his most famous works, including Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) are set in the fictionalized Wessex, the name that Hardy gave to the region in the west of England where he lived most of his life. Both Tess and Jude attracted criticism for their relatively frank portrayals of sexuality and critiques of the institutions of marriage. Hardy saw himself primarily as a poet, and his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems (1898), contained work he had composed over a period of approximately 30 years. In the 20th century, he published only poetry, including a number of works dealing with the Boer Wars and World War I. Hardy was married twice: first, to Emma Gifford, in 1874; then, in 1914, to Florence Dugdale, whom he had been in love with since 1893. He died in January 1928 after dictating his final poem to Florence. Hardy had wanted to be buried in the same grave as his first wife; however, his executor wanted him interred at Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.